Review: HTC Evo 4G

The HTC Evo 4G is the first WiMAX phone on the U.S. market. With high speed features like high quality YouTube streaming and mobile HotSpot capabilities, is the HTC Evo 4G the standard bearer for things to come? Find out in our full review.

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Form

Is It Your Type?

The HTC Evo 4G would be an interesting phone even if it lacked access to Sprint's "4G" WiMAX network. It's a large (humongous?) touchscreen phone running Android 2.1 and HTC's sparkling Sense UI. Besides all that Android has to offer, the phone is packed with multimedia, social networking and other fun and useful features. It might be too large for some, and Sprint's nascent network was a mixed bag in my tests, but for Internet addicts looking for a flagship phone, the HTC Evo 4G covers most of the bases.

Body

The HTC Evo 4G is a nice looking phone, but it didn't win me over with its design. With a large, 4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen, there's room for little else in the design, and sometimes it feels like you're carrying around a small dividing wall. It's still comfortable to hold for making calls, though, thanks to a nicely rounded shell and a grippy soft touch finish on the back.

Beneath the screen are the standard set of Android buttons: Home, Menu, Back and Search. The buttons are touch sensitive, and I always prefer real, hardware buttons to capacitive, but these worked fine and almost never missed my taps. On the right side is the volume rocker switch. It's a little small for my taste, I'd like a more pronounced button. Up top is the screen lock / power button, also a bit small. It's almost flush with the top of the phone, and slightly off center, so it was easy to miss.

There's no camera button on the Evo 4G. That's a poor choice, because the Evo 4G has a nice, 8 megapixel camera with auto focus. It's much easier to hold a stable shot with a two stage button on the side of the phone, instead of using software buttons on the touchscreen.

On the bottom of the phone are a microUSB port and a miniHDMI port. MiniHDMI is still a rarity on phones, though it's a bit more common on digital cameras. Still, HTC and Sprint should have bundled a miniHDMI cable with this phone, but none is included.

Around back, there's a kickstand to keep the phone in landscape at a slight angle on a desk. This might be nice for casual viewing, but I imagine it's even more useful for video conferencing. I'll find out once the video conferencing feature goes live, some time before the phone is launched. The microSD card is located under the battery. I'd complain that it's an inconvenient placement, but the real problem is the microSD card is so difficult to remove on this phone. It's placed at an odd angle and not spring loaded, so you have to pry with your fingertips.

Also under the battery cover: red plastic. Lots of bright red plastic for a striking look that highlights the camera lens and the kickstand. It's a cool touch.

The Three S's

Screen

The screen on the HTC Evo 4G was, at times, a bit disappointing. Under medium indoor light, the screen is crisp and clear. Text looks sharp and legible and the dark, contrasty interface looks polished. Outside, the Evo 4G couldn't hold up to bright daylight. This made it tough to use for normal email and calling tasks, and nearly impossible to use the camera, since you have to tap an onscreen button to take a shot. In almost every way, the screen fared better than the AMOLED display on the smaller Nexus One. It was a bit brighter with warmer colors and much better outdoor performance. But it could still stand some improvement.

Sound

The HTC Evo 4G sounds great making phone calls. My callers sounded clear with no drop outs or sound problems. On their end, callers said I also sounded nice and present, without any static or that distant sound to my voice. I was able to navigate my bank's voice command system with no trouble. The speaker was also nice and loud and fairly clear, for a speakerphone. It distorted at the highest volume, but it did manage to get loud enough that I could use it for conversations in a fast moving car. The Evo 4G also has a nice, loud ring. I could easily hear the ringer from across my house or when the phone was stuffed deep inside a backpack.

Signal

When you talk about signal strength on the HTC Evo 4G, you have to distinguish between Sprint's established, ubiquitous 3G network, and the up-and-coming, spotty WiMAX network. Sprint's 3G coverage is great, and I couldn't find a dead zone in the Dallas metroplex, a huge, sprawling area. WiMAX coverage, on the other hand, was not up to par. I kept my testing within the coverage zones on Clear's coverage maps, since my local Clear reps are helpful in providing tower locations and details. Clear runs Sprint's WiMAX network, and Sprint owns a majority stake in Clear. Even when I was supposedly well covered, the Evo 4G had trouble finding a WiMAX signal. Sometimes, I simply had to wait for the phone to scan a bit longer to connect, but often the signal just wasn't available to my test unit.

Even worse, though, was the inconsistency in performance I saw on the WiMAX network. The Evo 4G offers a separate signal strength indicator for 4G, as well as a control setting to turn the 4G radio off and on. In some areas of Dallas, specifically the northern suburbs that I call home, I would get a maximum 3 bars of 4G signal, but the download and upload speeds I registered were, well, pathetic. Often, the phone couldn't top 500 Kbps on a variety of speed tests. The top speed I saw for my town was around 2.5 Mbps, which is fine, but far below what I expected from a 4G device, and I could never count on getting that kind of performance. Usually, the HTC Evo 4G would hover between 1 - 1.5 Mbps. In side-by-side tests, my Google Nexus One on T-Mobile's HSDPA network often beat the Evo 4G, connected to Sprint's WiMAX network.

This was not always the case. In downtown Dallas and the more industrial areas, WiMAX performance was top notch. I regularly saw speeds in excess of 4 Mbps, often coming close to (but never, ever topping) 5 Mbps download speeds. Uploads were usually better than 1 Mbps.

Strangely, even when I got fast downloads on my speed tests, this didn't always translate into the über-responsive browser I was hoping for. Web pages loaded very quickly, but could still stall at first, leaving me hanging. YouTube videos performed very well, though, especially with a strong WiMAX signal.

Battery

Battery life also hinges on whether you're using WiMAX, and whether the phone is actually connected to the 4G network or searching for a signal. But I was still unimpressed by battery life even when 4G networking was turned off. With 4G, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all shut down, the phone still managed about five hours and fifteen minutes of talking time. That's fine, but not impressive. With 4G turned on, things got much worse. During my first day of testing, I turned on the 4G radio then forgot about the phone for almost three hours. The phone never connected to a 4G signal, and the battery was completely dead when I turned my attention back to the phone. In fact, it was so far gone that even after 20 minutes of charging, it didn't have enough juice to power up and stay on.

With the phone properly connected to the 4G network and two devices connected to Evo 4G as a Wi-Fi hotspot, I got just over three hours of use out of the phone. I was running constant streaming video on my laptop and browsing the Internet on my iPad, and the phone lasted through a short afternoon of work.

I can't imagine HTC stuffing a larger battery into this phone. The battery is already a 1500 mAh cell, among the largest you'll find in a commercial smartphone, and the phone already bulges a bit at the back compared to the thinner HTC HD2 on T-Mobile.

So, the moral of the story is that you should only turn on the 4G radio when you're covered by WiMAX signal, and when you'll actually be using it. In a mixed use test without any 4G networking, I got a full day's worth of power out of the phone, but I needed to charge it every night. This may not be the phone to use for a round of Wi-Fi Mario Kart DS while on a camping trip, but if you're careful, and if you have a charger nearby, it will power you through your day and give you the extra 4G boost when you really need it.

Touch

The capacitive touchscreen on the HTC Evo 4G worked flawlessly. The phone responded quickly to my taps and all of the multi-touch gestures worked smoothly. You can pinch and zoom in the photo gallery, Web browser and in Google Maps. You can even pinch the home screen to bring up a quick look screen that shows all seven home panels at once. Flick scrolling worked well, too, and the phone has kinetic scrolling built in everywhere, so menus will stretch out and pop back when you scroll to the very edge.

Basics

Menus

HTC's Sense interface doesn't replace Android so much as it augments it. I've always believed Android to be a bit complicated, but the learning curve pays off with a useful and highly customizable interface. HTC adds some style and some practical shortcuts, as well as some great enhancements, mostly in the contacts and calling features. Otherwise, the Android design language remains. There is a drop down notification menu, a pop up menu from the Menu key, and holding your finger on objects onscreen usually produces some sort of effect.

The HTC Evo 4G uses a seven panel homescreen that you can fill with bookmarks, application shortcuts, active widgets, folders that contain other items and more. While many touchscreen phones let you place icons and widgets on the home screen, Android goes a bit farther. For instance, when you tap a navigation shortcut, you don't just open the Google Maps app, you can jump right into a navigation session so that a shortcut might instruct the phone to direct you home every time you tap it. HTC adds more options to the widget pile, and these are mostly useful and very good looking. I wish many of them didn't take up a full home screen, though. If you want the HTC Friend Stream, which aggregates your Twitter and Facebook status feeds, you have to give up a full screen. Web bookmarks, too, take up a full screen. Most of HTC's widgets have multiple styles and sizes available, but almost all seemed a bit large. Perhaps that's why HTC added two extra panels, up from five home screen panels on the stock Android build, but I wouldn't mind some more compact options.

To jump around quickly, you can hold down the Home button to get a list of recent applications. As I also mentioned, you can pinch on any of the home panels to get a pinwheel of home screens, a faster way to jump from screen one to screen seven.

Deeper into the interface, there is an application drawer to hold all of your apps, and you can drag apps out of the drawer to create a desktop shortcut. HTC has added a splash of color to the settings menu, but it's still mostly white text on a black background, a stern design for a jumbled selection of settings. It can be difficult to find the exact setting you need. How to completely wipe the phone's memory, for instance. Is that Security? Phone Storage? Nope, it's Privacy, which makes sense, but isn't exactly intuitive.

Calls / Contacts

Calling

HTC devices shine when it comes to calling and contacts features, and the HTC Evo 4G is no exception. Making calls is very easy on this phone. There's a large Phone button at the bottom of the home screen that takes you to a dialpad. You can dial a number or start typing a name into the number keys, and the Evo 4G will search your contact list for you. When the Evo 4G rings, you can set the phone to quiet down the ringer a bit when the accelerometer feels you pick up the phone.

Once you're in a call, you get buttons to mute your microphone or activate the speakerphone. Pressing the menu key on the call screen gets you three-way calling, and it was easy to connect a third party.

Contacts

The contact list on the Evo 4G is spectacular. You can save as many phone numbers, email addresses and street addresses as you like for each contact. Once saved, you can then start a call, send a message or open a navigation session from that person's contact page. You can assign contacts to a specific group, or even tell the phone to always send that person's call to voicemail.

Once you have synchronized the phone with your various social networks, the Evo 4G will also give you the option of linking address book contacts to your online friends. The phone gives you a nice level of control, so you can add contacts from Facebook, Twitter and even Flickr, and then choose which picture to use as that person's avatar. Once you've linked a contact, you can also see more information on their address book entry. The Evo 4G pulls updates and events from Facebook, as well as online photo albums from Facebook and Flickr. That's all available in the address book, mind you, not some extra widget or mobile Web site. The address book also gives you useful information like recent messages from that person and your complete calling history.

Messaging

The HTC Evo 4G comes with the normal assortment of Google apps for messaging, as well as a nice selection of social networking apps. Google provides email support for POP and IMAP accounts, as well as a specialized app just for Gmail with support for labels and other advanced Gmail features. There's no instant messaging on board except for Google Talk, though plenty of other IM apps are available from the Google App Market.

Text messaging uses HTC's own Messages app, not the stock Google messaging app. HTC's app looks great, displaying messages in a threaded, conversational style. Even pictures from MMS messages show up in the conversation stream. In addition to pictures and audio files, HTC's Messages also lets you send vCard contacts and vCalendar events, as well as location data in the form of Google Maps links or even Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

For social networking fans, the HTC Evo 4G comes with the official Facebook app pre-loaded, plus a couple of extra apps exclusive to HTC. Peep is an above average Twitter app. You can check status updates, add pictures and location data to your tweets and browse the list of tweeters you're followed by and following. Peep doesn't allow you to check trending topics, though, and updates could be a bit sluggish. Friend Stream provides a variety of updates from your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Not only does it give you status updates, you also see when friends have posted new photos and albums and it even gathers the Web links your Facebook friends have posted to their walls.

The onscreen keyboard on the HTC Evo 4G is very well designed, and HTC's software QWERTY is my second favorite keyboard on any touchscreen phones. It's very useful with some cool features. If you want to type a number or symbol, you can just hold down the corresponding letter and the keyboard will offer the symbols for that key. You can also access speech-to-text features from the keyboard. It isn't perfect, but Google's speech-to-text is very useful in a pinch, like when I wanted to send an email while walking the dog. Even with these great features, I found the HTC keyboard less forgiving than the QWERTY on my Apple iPhone 3GS. The Evo 4G's keyboard is obviously larger, but I ended up with fewer mistakes on the iPhone because Apple's auto-correct feature is better than HTC's.

Extras

Multimedia

Music

The HTC Evo 4G has a solid music player app from HTC, but Android still needs a proper media sync tool to compete with the best music phones around. HTC's music player doesn't pack a lot of features, like an equalizer or advanced audio controls, and it lacks the easy search capabilities of the standard Android music player, which lets you search the Web or YouTube by simply clicking on an artist name, song title, etc. It does look very nice, though, and all my album artwork came through just fine. There's a sort of Apple Cover Flow-like feature that lets you finger through album covers, but this isn't for browsing, as moving through the line of artwork also skips to the corresponding tracks. When the phone is locked, HTC gives you music controls and album art on the lock screen so it's fast and easy to skip around without jumping into the music player. There's also a selection of home screen widgets to play music, in a variety of sizes from small to full screen.

The phone has solid hardware for music and multimedia fans. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack up top so you can listen to tunes on your favorite earbuds. The phone uses microUSB to connect with a desktop machine, and it showed up as an external drive on my Mac and Windows machines. Transferring music was drag-and-drop easy, and the player found my music files without any help from me. I'd like to be able to organize playlists and manage music on my desktop, though. The phone also packs stereo Bluetooth, and I had no trouble playing music through my stereo Bluetooth speakers.

Video

With its huge screen, the HTC Evo 4G makes an ideal video playing phone. I loaded a variety of video samples, and they all looked great on the WVGA display. The phone couldn't handle videos at the screen's 800 by 480 pixel resolution, but smaller videos resized nicely and looked sharp and colorful. Again, the video player is even more basic than the music player, but I was able to scrub through movies with my finger and manage playback easily. The video playlist doesn't give you titles with your videos, though, so if you have a few that are similar (like my test videos at various resolutions), you'll have trouble figuring out which is which.

There's a kickstand around back that props the phone up at a nice angle for video viewing. It's an easy option to watch some video without interrupting work on my desktop machine, or turning on my television set. It was most useful when I let the Sprint TV app play the news or program highlights while I performed other tasks.

Besides your own videos, the phone also uses the new high quality YouTube mobile service. When you have a 4G or Wi-Fi connection, YouTube will look for a high quality (HQ) version of the video you want. These YouTube HQ videos looked much better than what I'm used to on a mobile YouTube app. Videos that are high definition on the full site came through looking like a real TV broadcast, and not a streaming video. It's quite impressive and it makes YouTube much more enjoyable on a mobile device. Too bad it doesn't work on Sprint's standard 3G network, too.

Camera

Camera

The camera app on the HTC Evo 4G is very good, with touch focus and a fast, easy menu system to change settings. Still, this doesn't make up for the lack of a dedicated camera button. Self portraits were especially difficult on this phone. You have to line up your finger before you turn the phone's screen away from yourself. Even then, it was very easy to slide a finger past the capacitive touch buttons beneath the screen, and this causes the camera to quit entirely.

Otherwise, the camera boasts an impressive level of image control. You get white balance and ISO controls, in addition to a range of color contrast and metering methods. The phone can use face detection to make sure faces are in focus. You can geo-tag photos, and there are some artistic effects, including a few unique color filters, like a solarize and a posterize filter.

In addition to the 8 megapixel camera around back, which can also shoot video at 720p resolution, there is a front-facing camera on the Evo 4G. It uses a 1 megapixel sensor and can record VGA videos. Best of all, the front camera gives you a view of yourself, so you can line up a self portrait more easily, if you don't mind the low resolution. That front camera will be much more useful when Qik and other third party developers start producing video conferencing software for the Evo 4G. Qik's software should be available before the phone hits stores, but HTC tells me that any developer can use the front camera.

One strange issue came up since I originally published this review. It seems that Qik on the Evo 4G fails to reverse the image it sends to the Qik Web site. Usually, a video chat camera will show you a mirror image of yourself in preview, but your friends see a normal image. The Evo 4G shows your friends a mirror of you. Text looks backwards, right is left, and so on. It's not a huge problem, one I might have never noticed, but it is a glitch that could use a fix.

Image Gallery

The image gallery on the HTC Evo 4G is great for viewing photos and sharing them with your favorite people and networks. There are few image editing tools available; nothing beyond cropping and rotating your photos. But the gallery offers a few different viewing styles, including a slidehow, which pairs nicely with the phone's kickstand to make the Evo 4G a digital photo frame. The gallery supports pinch and zoom gestures, and zooming was very smooth on the Evo 4G.

When you want to send a photo from the gallery, it's easy to share pictures with your social networks, Flickr and Picasa, or send pics as an email or MMS attachment. Unlike most other Android phones I've tested, the Evo 4G even includes the Bluetooth OPP profile, so you can send image files over a Bluetooth connection with your desktop machine.

Image Quality

Photos

Photos from the eight megapixel camera on the HTC Evo 4G looked pretty good. They looked better than most other cameraphones, including other eight megapixel phones I've seen recently (I'm looking at you, Kin Two), but the quality still wasn't close to what you'll get from a dedicated point-and-shoot camera. Under good, outdoor light, pictures looked sharp and colors were accurate. At full crop, though, details tend to fall apart and an oversharpening effect makes images look decidedly digital. I also saw plenty of noise in shady areas, even shots that were not so bright elsewhere. Inside, noise was much more prevalent, dominating every part of an image that wasn't blown out by the excessively bright dual-LED flash. Using two bright, low quality LED flash lamps does not replace a higher quality Xenon flash, and though the Evo 4G could light up a dark room like a supernova, that didn't make pictures looked balanced or well lit.

Photos will look great posted to your favorite social site or used as wallpapers for a desktop monitor. Some of the best pics might be print quality, but the sharpening issues and unbalanced light will keep you from wasting paper on most shots.

Video

Video quality didn't hold up as well as photos. I was especially disappointed with the so-called high definition, 720p recording. Sure, the Evo 4G packs in all the pixels of an HD video, but the quality was very low. Details were blurry, filled with compression artifacts and noise. In my video of the pool, for instance, it's impossible to discern individual ripples in the water. The camera can't hold up under the brightest outdoor lighting conditions, and it was even worse indoors. The Evo 4G's camcorder doesn't come close to replacing a real camcorder, and it can hardly compete with a mini video recorder like a Flip HD.

And here is a high definition movie shot in 720p on the Evo 4G's camcorder:

Browse / Customize

Browse

Aside from the troubles I had with the Sprint network, the Web browser on the Evo 4G is top notch. Pages looked great on the Evo's screen, and layout, images and text came through perfectly. The phone can handle multiple windows in the browser, and moving between open windows was a snap.

The Evo 4G even gets some rudimentary Flash support with Flash Lite. It's a far cry from the Flash 10.1 beta I'm using on my Google Nexus One, but this is definitely the best browser I've seen using the earlier Flash Lite software. It still had a tendency to crash the browser or stall on some intense Flash-based sites, but for displaying simple banner ads and filling in the blanks on popular Web pages, Flash Lite on the Evo 4G did the trick. It wasn't as fast or stable watching Flash videos. Better to watch YouTube videos on the dedicated YouTube app, and skip the rest until Flash 10.1 rolls around.

Navigating pages was also a breeze. The phone responds very quickly to touch, even pinch and zoom gestures in the Web browser. The phone did a fine job resizing text frames quickly to fit the width of the screen as I zoomed in to get a closer look. The Evo 4G also gives you a deep settings menu to fine tune your browsing experience, turning Flash on or off, controlling whether a page is loaded in its mobile or desktop version and plenty more options.

Customize

There are loads of customization options for the HTC Evo 4G. You can set up the perfect set of home screen panels for traveling, then save your layout and build your perfect setup for a day in the office. HTC offers a few preset suggestions, or you can customize your own. Besides all the shortcuts and widgets you can add to the home panels, you also get multiple designs for almost every widget, including about a dozen different clock designs. You can use live wallpaper with the Evo 4G. You can also set up notifications and ringtones to your own specifications, assigning a different alert sound for different events or different callers.

You can't change the color of the device theme, and the dark black interface can seem a bit stern at times. It also didn't help viewing in bright sunlight. I'd like to see some color themes pre-loaded to liven things up a bit.

Extras

Bluetooth

The HTC Evo 4G has some of the best Bluetooth support among Android phones I've seen. My Bluetooth headset paired with no trouble, as did my stereo Bluetooth speakers. I was able to send files over Bluetooth to my Windows 7 desktop. The phone also supports phonebook (PBA) profiles to sync contacts with a compatible device. Bluetooth was easy to use and reliable in every case.

Clock

Did I mention the twelve different home screen clocks available with HTC's Sense UI? There is a wide variety of very cool designs, and all of them are large and easy to read (except when they are difficult for obvious artistic reasons). You also get a clock on the lock screen to check the time quickly. Plus, there's a clock in the notification bar at the top of the Android screen. Tap the notification bar lightly and the phone will show you the date as well.

The Evo 4G has a desk clock mode that give you the time, temperature and weather forecast. There are world clocks, alarm clocks, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. HTC takes time (and weather) very seriously; the Evo 4G makes it easy to be punctual.

GPS

Sprint has bundled its own Sprint Navigator with the HTC Evo 4G, and the phone also comes with Google Maps for local search and turn-by-turn directions. All of the location based apps I tried worked very well. The phone had no trouble finding a GPS signal quickly, even when I was indoors with a scant view of the sky above. Normally I'd recommend the free Google Maps navigation over the carrier app, but Sprint doesn't charge an extra fee for using Sprint Navigation, it's free with the phone's data plan. The TeleNav-created app worked very well and looked great, so it's really a matter of preference. I preferred the search features and linked phone directory of the Google Maps app, but Sprint Navigator also has a fine point-of-interest database and great looking navigation interface.

There are loads of location-based apps in the Google App Market, and HTC has bundled its own fun app for travelers. Footprints lets you record your location and a picture. It's a nice, simple way to track where you've been, especially useful when you'll be visiting loads of landmarks on your journey. You can take a picture, jot down some notes and assign a category to your 'footprint,' like Dining, Leisure and Shopping.

Wi-Fi Hotspot

The HTC Evo 4G can act as a tethered modem, or it can generate a Wi-Fi hotspot using its own network connection. When you have 4G coverage, this is an awesome feature. I tried the hotspot with my laptop, my iPad and even other smartphones, and speeds were fantastic when my WiMAX connection was solid. I was able to stream high definition video, hold IM chats and browse the Web quickly. Even when the phone wasn't connected to Sprint's 4G, I was still able to connect my devices to share the 3G signal, and that was good enough in a pinch.

That tethered modem support doesn't come free. To tether up to eight devices to the HTC Evo 4G, you'll have to pay an extra $30 per month. That's on top of the $70 monthly voice and data plan, and the extra $10 Sprint is charging all Evo 4G users, whether or not you are using the WiMAX network. Compared to Verizon's deal on the Palm Pre Plus, which offers a similar HotSpot feature for up to five users for free, this seems expensive. But the Pre Plus is an anomaly, and $30 is reasonable for this type of service. It's even a bargain if you have good WiMAX coverage, since a 4G-capable Sprint Overdrive, a portable HotSpot device that performs the same service, will run you $60 per month.

Video Tour

Wrap-Up

The HTC Evo 4G is a very good phone, but more than that it's a sign of things to come. If Sprint had released the device without WiMAX, it would still be a top-notch smartphone, but 4G networking gives the Evo 4G even more potential. Unfortunately, my experience with the Sprint 4G network was less than satisfactory.

When it worked well, Sprint's 4G network offered fast, high quality video streaming from YouTube, faster Web browsing and, eventually, even video conferencing, a first for a device in the U.S. But most of the time it did not work well, and it couldn't even top the 3G speeds I saw on my Google Nexus One. Sprint says this will gradually improve, but until the WiMAX network is reliably much faster than the 3G options out there, does Sprint have a right to charge $10 extra per month for the privilege of using the HTC Evo 4G? It's a catch 22, since more revenue means a better network down the road, but the network isn't good enough to be worth the extra money yet.

In any case, the HTC Evo 4G stands on its own as a great smartphone. For basic calling features, especially the rich, detailed address book with all its social networking extras, the Evo 4G is the best in its class. It's fast and responsive all around, and I love the HTC Sense interface design. The phone browses the Web like the best phones on the market, and even Flash Lite can't keep this phone down. Music and multimedia features could use more advanced features, but even without the bells and whistles music sounded great and videos were fun to watch on the gigantic screen.

If I could improve the phone, I'd work on the high definition video recording to improve video quality. I might also tweak the auto correct feature on the software keyboard. The QWERTY is great, with some convenient shortcuts, but it still couldn't save my hasty fingers from making mistakes.

If you're in a strong WiMAX coverage area, the HTC Evo 4G is a no-brainer. Go buy it right away. If coverage is more spotty, as it is in my area, the Evo 4G is still a great choice, and it will probably get better in time, but that monthly bill is going to be a bitter pill you'll have to swallow to enjoy the benefits this phone offers.

My 2c:The review was a bit lackluster. It's hard to describe, but the tone of the review was almost bored or annoyed at having to review the EVO. It was also a bit unpolished. I noticed at least one minor grammar error.

Dude, if you didn't already know that *any* time Rich reviews a Sprint device he can't help himself but to disparage the network in some way and assume we all must get the same coverage (or lack of coverage) that he does, then you need to brush up on ...(continues)

If You Keep giving wrong information over and over, someone will believe you.

The $10.00 Add-On according to Sprint is not for 4G service, its to ensure that there will be the bandwith available for this data hog of a device. It gives you unlimited data whether you use 3G or 4G.

I don't think I said it was $10 for 4G. It's not. It's $10 extra for all Evo users, 4G or not. Other users, like HTC Hero owners, get unlimited data without the $10. Sure, Sprint does have great plans, even with the $10 addition. But they set a high b...(continues)

I have been a long time reader of phonescoop and constantly use is for reference when I need precise information on features and the like. I never commented on the forums until now. I really don't understand what the deal with this review and the fanboys (cellenator being the most ridiculous) who hate on Sprint? The video review, in my opinion, was sub par compared to review of similar devices on other networks. If this had come out on AT&T, the review would have been completely different. Too bad they didn't name it an iEvo.

P.S- Can't wait until the new iPhone 4 review comes out, i'm sure the reviewer will be all hyped up and pumped and will give it a godly review. Shortly after all the AT&T fanboys will soil themselves and continue to ...(continues)

Aww, I thought it was a good review. The video is 90% positive, too. Did you hear what I said about HTC Sense? And, for the record, I've been a Sprint customer almost continually since my first mobile phone.

For the most part - this is a Goliath version of my HTC Hero (which I love). Even though I'll more than likely own a different phone by the time I have access to 4G....this is more than enough to motivate me to upgrade now at full retail price.

Do you have websites demanding that AT&T and Verizon Wireless explain why their $69.99 plans ONLY include voice service, and why there is a "mandatory" $10 fee for navigation, and $20 for unlimit...(continues)

Hey all, I found a seller on Craigslist in the Dallas area that is selling a 2m long micro-HDMI to HDMI cable for $40! Not bad if you live nearby and can pick up same day (like me). Don't have to wait (a week or two) and pay shipping or tax. I've a...(continues)

2) The battery on 3G barely lasts a day, and you have to pamper it. My iPhone (which is almost 2 years old) and my Pre both run laps around it, as does my N1. If you turn on 4G You can kill the battery in 2 hours. . Friggin. Pathetic.

3) 3G is downright slow. I barely pull above 900kbps on this. My iPhone and Nexus One both pull in twice that speed on AT&T's 3G Network. The Pre even does a little better.

I have anxiously been awaiting this phone as well as many others. The reason why I returned my first Sprint droid phone (i already forget what it's called) is because of the horrible calendar integration. When I saw that the EVO has has the exact same calendar set up as the other droid phone, I immediately said, "no thanks!" The calendar is horrible, it doesn't alert you of overlapping appointments and I do recall the alrms being faint.I also do not want to pay the $10 fee when I can continue to perform everything in a professional manner through my BlackBerry.

I hated the first android based Sprint phone so I don't even think I will give this one a second look. Time to stick with what is tied and trued and just upgrade my BlackBerr...(continues)

Sprint is blowing it with these extra 15.00 charges on top of the monthly plan. I mean wtf I was cool with the 10.00 tech expense thinking this is what would cover stuff like video chat. Now it seems more like a way to **** an early adopter of new tec...(continues)

Can anyone offer any REAL information on if this device will be gutted and used for an unlocked GSM phone with sim slot from HTC direct? I know the chipset offers GSM abilities but that does not translate into an actual use on GSM networks, if that makes sense.

if HTC had been smart they would have put in a 2 to 3k mah battery these phones either need better energy usage or bigger batteries its getting annoying that a smart phones life is barely 8-10 hours a day

I bet it's worse than that. If you're like me and you use the features on your phone consistently throughout the day I imagine the battery on this phone wouldn't even last 6 or 7 hours at best. What I don't understand is why they make these awesome ...(continues)

First time ever since I left Sprint 8 years ago, Sprint finally has a decent product.If I were Sprint CEO, I won't loose this chance, they should update Froyo on Evo 4G ASAP and promote 4G with WiFi Tethering!Obviously, they need to install 4G towers major cities faster than Verizon and other competitors!I will recommend to anyone I know~

I see some people bitching bout the add on fees. I notice we have not heard from the Rotten Apple FanBoys. Look at AT&t, to have an iPhone you have to have a current plan from $59.99 up, then there is the $30.00 REQUIRED iPhone plan, and that still does not include messaging. To get the unlimited messaging it is $20.00 a month. Plus for all you VZW Fanboys, read the news, VZW will not allow unlimited LTE, it will be a tiered price program, starting at $60.00 a month

Just wanted to pipe in and say that the review mistakenly calls the Micro HDMI jack (aka HDMI type d) Mini HDMI (HDMI type c). Just wanted to make sure people know that there is a difference and don't order a mini only to find out it doesn't work. Again to clarify, the phone supports Micro HDMI, not Mini HDMI.